


Choice (The Hell is A Teenage Girl Remix)

by havisham



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry's chest monster is genetic, Marauders' Era, Remix, Secret Relationship, Teenagers, all of Lupin's relationships are clusterfucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4227039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ah, young love. Isn't it hell?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choice (The Hell is A Teenage Girl Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelgazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/70977) by [angelgazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing). 
  * In response to a prompt by [angelgazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> Thanks to my beta, legionseagle.

When Lily was young -- only six or seven years old, long before she knew about magic and Hogwarts, she used to bite her nails. Petunia told her it was a disgusting and only little girls did it. Lily protested, saying that she only did it when she was nervous or upset. It wasn’t disgusting -- _she_ wasn’t disgusting. Petunia said it was and she was. The two girls were about to have fight, when their mother came along, holding a laundry basket of clothes. 

Briskly, their mother set down the basket and asked what was the matter. Half-sobbing, Lily explained, while Petunia crossed her arms and sulked. She sulked harder when their mother told her to put away the clothes, throwing little looks backward as she went. 

Then, her mother asked, “Would you like me to show you something, Lily?”

Lily looked up to her mother and sniffed, then nodded. 

Hand in hand, they went to the bedroom where Lily’s parents slept, to the corner where the little white vanity table sat. It was a pretty thing, with an oval mirror flanked with two candleholders, also painted white. Lily looked around in fascination at the little tubs of lipstick and bottles of perfume that lined the top of the vanity, heavenly scented, and all in colors of whites, and pinks and roses. All a part of the mysterious, but exciting world of adulthood. 

Her mother patted the vanity stool and helped Lily climb up. 

Lily looked at her reflection, and behind her, her mother’s. Alike as two peas in a pod, they were: the same red hair, the same bright green eyes. 

“Now, Lily,” her mother said, “you know that Petunia was right that grown-up girls don’t bite their nails. But I can show you something that will help you stop.” 

“What is it?” Lily asked, deciding that she wouldn’t say that Petunia was never right about anything. 

Her mother reached over her head and took a little bottle of pink nail polish from the back of the vanity and set it in front of her. “You can keep that, if you like. Whenever you feel like biting your nails, you can paint them instead. Would you like me to paint them for you now?” 

Lily nodded, wide-eyed. She set her hand flat against the table and watched as her mother clipped her nails and cleaned them. And then, oh so slowly, she painted each of Lily’s fingernails, her hands steady and sure. They were lovely, at the end of it, and they both admired the work.

"And now you're perfect," Lilly's mother said, smiling at her. Lily smiled back. 

 

*

There was a pale boy who stood next to her in the line to be sorted. He hadn't said a single thing to her, but he also didn't seem to mind that Lily had been shaking the whole way. The excitement of the day had all but gone now, and she desperately wanted to go home. She missed her mother, her father, and even Petunia. She couldn’t look at all the other students in the hall, staring at the first years. Instead, she studied the ceiling, charmed to look like the night sky. 

Severus was in the back of the line, and she couldn’t see him from where she was. He had sat with her on the train, but afterward, he had disappeared into a crowd of other, older children. Lily was not without her own resources -- she became fast friends with her seatmate on the boat, a girl named Penelope Abbott, but Penelope had already been sorted, and now sat with the Gryffindors. 

"Don't be afraid," said the boy suddenly. "My mum said there's nothing to it -- the hat takes care of everything." 

"Should a hat -- have that much responsibility?" Lily asked cautiously. She didn't want to seem ignorant _\-- but --_

"They've had it forever, it's as much a part of the school as a the name," said the boy with a shrug. "My name's Remus Lupin." 

He didn't hold out his hand, but Lily stuck hers out until he shook it. 

"Lily Evans," Lily said, with a grin. 

"Pretty," said Remus, and blushed. She blushed back, although she didn't know why she should. And anyway, there was no time to reply back. They were calling her name. 

* 

"Potter likes you," said Pen and Lily laughed aloud and smeared the lion that she had been very carefully painted on her nails. Some of it got on the edges of her Transformations homework. 

"Fuck Potter," Lily said, charming off bits of nail polish from parchment. 

* 

She wasn’t sure how exactly it had happened, but it was on a Hogsmeade weekend during their fifth year that Lily pushed Remus against a stone wall and kissed him. They had been walking to Honeydukes, talking about something or other and she had just done it. When she stepped away, she saw that he looked absolutely terrified. Hair almost standing up terrified, and even more ashen than usual. 

“What’s the matter?” Lily said, her hand pressed against her mouth. 

“Um, you. Kissed me. Did you -- want to do that?” Remus blinked and looked more hapless now than frightened. 

She had kissed him on impulse and because he had looked so vulnerable, standing there. Lily decided to brazen it out, to see what would happen. “I did.” 

“Why?” 

Why Remus? Well, she liked him, for one. They were friends, for another. And he was one of the few boys in her house, in her year who didn’t seem to run entirely on hormones and bravado. The other girls sometimes sighed over him _\-- Remus is always so sad, why you’d think that is? --_ but Lily wasn’t fooled. She saw that Remus was happier now than he had ever been before -- she supposed Potter and the lot were responsible for that. 

Happiness did suit Remus. 

“Why not?” Lily said with the shrug. “Do you want to do it again?” 

“Yes.” The answer was so immediate that it made Lily grin and Remus blush. 

“I mean, if you like,” Remus said, trying what seemed to be Sirius' smoothness and failing horribly. 

Lily giggled and kissed him anyway. 

*

It was _exciting_ , to have a boyfriend no one else knew about. A secret lover and all that, like she was one of the characters in one of those romance novels she and Petunia devoured in the summertime. Lily wasn't the kind to brag to her friends about it, but she felt it, right there, a hot, pleasant feeling against her chest. 

She wished that she could tell Severus. But she hadn't spoken to him since that day he had called her a Mudblood. She didn't think she ever would again.

In public, Lily and Remus acted as they had always done. But she drifted among his friends more often now. She was bright and combative, brushing off Potter’s advances like they were nothing, trading barbs with Sirius. Peter, she mostly ignored -- unlike the rest, he didn't seem like he had hit puberty just yet. And Remus... Well, he was content to fade into the background, until he spoke up with a joke that stopped everyone dead, before they burst out laughing. They would share a look, sometimes, when no one else was watching. 

But then -- later -- they would sneak away, touch, kiss, and explore each other’s bodies. Lily watched in fascination as Remus seemed to forget himself, and the charm he used to hide his scars failed. She touched them and he gasped. Another moment, and they were gone. 

He had a secret, Remus did. 

Lily wondered how much he would tell her, and how much she wanted to know. 

*

Petunia wrote to Lily Hogwarts only once. In her crabbed, spiky handwriting, she wrote that their mother was ill, and the doctors thought it was pancreatic cancer. Their mother had told Petunia not to write, that Lily ought not make to the long trip home before Christmas. But. 

Lily rushed to McGongall's office before she came to the end of Petunia's letter. 

Later, when she saw her mother at the hospital, she almost thought that she had come into the wrong room. Her mother, always so bright and vivid, seemed washed out now. Even her hair was sandy and rough, her skin as white as paper. But her eyes flew open as Lily approached her bed. 

"Lily?" Her mother said, as if she could hardly believe it. 

"Hello, mum," Lily said, clutching the bag of grapes she had brought with her. She tried to smile but she couldn't quite manage it. 

Petunia came a few hours later, to take Lily down for supper at the hospital canteen. After that, they went up against to see their mother. The two sisters didn't speak so much as hold each other, watching their mother sleep until the nurses came to tell them that visiting hours were over. 

"D'you think your wizards could save her?" Petunia asked, as they walked out of the hospital. It was dark now, and raining lightly. 

Wizards could grow back bones and heal cuts like they had never happened. Nicholas Flamel had found the secret to the Philosopher's Stone. But wizards died, the same as Muggles. Lily had asked Professor McGongall what she could do, if she could save her mother. McGongall had been kind, but firm. It would violate the Statute of Secrecy, and the penalties for doing that were severe. 

Lily wanted to explain, but nothing she could say would make it easier, nothing that would make it seem like she wasn’t putting her own future ahead of her mother’s life.

Lily breathed out, and in. “Petunia,” she said, hating how soft and uncertain her voice sounded. “If there was anything I could do, I would. But I can't." 

"Oh," Petunia said, with a twist of her lip. "What good is your magic then, Lily? Those wizards -- ha, what's an ordinary person to them? Hardly human." 

Lily remembered Severus and felt a coldness at the pit of her stomach. "They're not all like that." 

She thought Petunia looked at her then with something like pity. 

 

* 

"We can't keep doing this," Remus said, guilt almost bleeding out of him. "Lily, I’m not -- I’m not a good for you. Really, I’m not.” 

Lily’s anger flared up. Her nails flashed against his sandy hair and his mouth opened, but no words came out. 

But her voice was steady when she said. "If you don't want to, Remus, that's all right. But if you believe someone else has a prior claim on me, then I --" She sighed, pushing the hair from her face. "Then I can't have that. Because I choose who I'm with, not anyone else. You know?" 

"Lily," he whispered, looking dazed, looking lost. 

“And,” she said, “if you want to tell me something -- something you haven’t told me before -- Remus, love, this is the time to do it.” 

He looked uncertain, hesitating, and she thought he would say it, finally, he would tell her the secret that she had figured out almost a year ago, but had been waiting for him to tell her. 

But no, he only shook his head. He looked so miserable that she wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and keep him safe. But he didn't want that, not really. 

"You know," she said again, flatly.

“You could -- I mean, I wouldn’t stop you from --” Finding out, from knowing. He didn’t say, but he looked at her, begging. _Please, please, don’t say it._ Pretend that this was about James, this was about Sirius, and the rest. It was cruel, but easier to pretend. 

She shouldn’t _have_ to pretend, she shouldn’t have to pretend not to know. She drummed her fingers against his chest, thinking. Chewing her lip (although that wasn't very lady-like, Petunia would no doubt tell her), she said, "No." 

She saw his face close up, and amended her words. "You wouldn't, would you." 

She stopped, bent down to his sweaty forehead. Remus looked at her like she was his mother, like she was a goddess, like she was a monster. She swallowed, hard. "You have to choose." 

"Lily," he said, grabbing a hold her wrist, when she reached for her robe. He let go as soon as she looked at him. "I - it wouldn't be right, you see." 

She did, see it clearly. God. She couldn't wait to be old, old enough that she could look back to this and laugh at how unbelievably stupid she had been, letting a boy like Remus break her heart. 

She cocked her head and grinned, her teeth almost bared. "It isn't now, Remus." 

 

* 

Lily's mother died the summer before her last year at Hogwarts. She and Petunia huddled together in Lily's room, hardly speaking, hardly breathing. It seemed impossible that she should be gone. Lily laid on the bed, looking at the cracked ceiling while Petunia paced back and forth, worrying her engagement ring on her thin finger. 

“Vernon will be here soon,” she fretted and Lily closed her eyes. She didn’t like Vernon, who had a thick, beefy neck and whose eyes tended to linger on Lily’s breasts. Petunia was very proud of him, but Lily thought her sister could do much better. 

And she said so. 

Petunia had rounded on her and hissed that Lily ought to keep her opinions to herself. 

“As if you’re here often enough to know him,” she continued. “And honestly, Lily, you’re no better than you ought to be. it's no wonder, Mother always spoiled you.” 

“What's that supposed to mean?” Lily said, sitting up. 

Petunia sneered, but wouldn’t say anything further. 

The day after her mother’s funeral, Lily packed her bags and left her childhood home for the last time. She stopped for a moment at the door of her mother’s room, looking to the vanity table. Petunia had already cleared everything away. 

*

The thing about Lily was that she wanted to live. 

She wanted to live so badly that sometimes she could hardly breathe, as if her throat was closed over by the force of _wanting_ so badly. She wanted to go, beyond Spinner's End, beyond Hogwarts, even. The whole world was out there, waiting for her. 

Lily watched the landscape go by, and hardly noticed that someone had opened the compartment door. She turned, expecting Pen, or Remus, or even Severus. But instead, it was James Potter. He had grown taller over the summer, and his hair didn't fall so much into his face as it usually did. But more than anything physical, there seemed to be another change in him, something not quite definable. 

"May I sit here?" he asked, looking prepared for her now-inevitable rejection. 

But Lily only said, "Where are your friends?" 

"Oh," he shrugged, with a half-smile. "Busy doing something stupid, probably." 

Lily smiled back. "I'm sure they miss you, then." 

"Probably." 

He reached into his robe and Lily was about to speak when he drew out a Chocolate Frog and presented it to her with a flourish. Lily hesitated for a moment and then took it, and smiled.


End file.
